Small(er) World

In 1984, at age 23, I packed up a large orange backpack with clothes, some music cassettes, and a copy of Let's Go Europe, and took a one-way flight to London. I had no agenda and no time frame for myself. I might be gone a month, I might be gone forever. With nothing particularly promising going on for me at home, all bets were off.

Stories about that trip could occupy blog posts from me for months. It was one of the great experiences of my life, and a turning point for me in every way. I stayed for four months, returning for the birth of my brother's first child (who just gave birth to HER first child a few months ago). Had that not happened, I don't know how long I would have stayed. Probably a lot longer.

I've been back to Europe many times since then. Partly as an indirect result of that trip, I married a French woman, so as often as our time and expenses can afford we visit her homeland. I'm writing this now from Cabris, France, a small town near Cannes, where we've spent a week relaxing and sightseeing and generally trying to tune out.

The key word in that last sentence, however, is "trying." Because one thing I've been thinking about on this trip is just how much the world has changed, and shrunk, since I first came here in 1984. Back then, there was no email. Back then, there were no cell phones. Back then, there were no websites, or Twitter, or Facebook, or Instagram to keep you constantly in touch with the people in your life no matter where in the world you were.

I'm not a Luddite by any means (I'm typing this on my iPad 3 with Bluetooth keyboard attached - there was no way I was going to travel without it - and I've used it constantly throughout the trip), but I do admit to feeling a little bit of old man nostalgia at The Way Things Used to Be while over here this time. On that trip in 1984, I truly felt the reality of my geographical situation: that I was on the other side of the world. No one I knew had any way to get in touch with me. And the only way I could communicate on my end was via postcard, or pay phone, which was an unreliable, complicated, and expensive process. The only news I'd get would be from the International Herald Tribune (or occasionally, depending on the city, the NY Times).

I kept track of my experiences rather meticulously in a written journal, which I own to this day--but this really just for myself. I wasn't sharing "updates" with either people I knew or in the kind of public postings (like this one) that have become a part of my regular life. What I was experiencing was private, and, at age 23, profound and overwhelming, for the specific reason that I was experiencing it alone, without a lifeboat, as it were, of contact with the world that I knew.

I marvel every single day at the miracle of the Internet, of the instant access to information and communication (it's how I make my living, of course), and would not want to have it any other way now. It's insane how lucky we are to be living at this time, with this incredibly empowering technology. If I'd known, back then, that there'd come a day when I could basically own any record or book within seconds of thinking of it, without even having to leave my couch, my head might have exploded. And this is without even getting into the far more serious political and social advances that the Internet has created, through the democratization of information.

But, sitting here in this house in France, knowing that I'm about to hit the Send button on this post, for anyone in the world to read within seconds, and knowing, too, that after posting this I will goof off on Twitter and Facebook and Reddit, connecting with everyone I know as if I never even left, I think something was lost, too. Yes, I could disconnect all my devices and pretend it's 1984 again. And for the most part, I have done that on this trip.

But whether I voluntarily choose to connect or not doesn't change the singular fact that the world is much smaller than it used to be. For better and worse, there's no going back. Being "on the other side of the world" will never again mean what it used to. We're all in each other's business all the time now. It's a freaking miracle, is what it is.

But I'm glad I got to live in a time when it wasn't always like this. When it wasn't a choice. When you were out of touch because you had to be. When being out of touch was kind of the point.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad